Bucky Barnes / Steve Rogers (MCU)
Falling back into the natural, easy friendship that they'd always shared wasn't as hard as Bucky thought it would be after the cat was let out of the proverbial bag a few months ago. Neither of them had ever been that great about the whole feelings talk but they'd gotten through it and evolved and accepted that the love they had for each other was always going to be there; it just had taken a different form. He didn't love Steve any less. He just loved him a different way.
"Yeah, I get that," he said. There was definitely a risk going through the doors. None of them really knew anything about them despite having been in town for half a year. They weren't any closer to understanding how the mechanism worked or who was behind it all but Bucky also wasn't really trying, or asking anyone else to try. He had what he wanted here. And while he knew it was the right thing to do to go back, he didn't want to own up to that. Not when he'd gained so much, and he was happier than he'd been in nearly a lifetime.
"Here in Vegas? I think the old me would've enjoyed it more," he said. "Definitely would've dragged you around the strip." Bucky laughed a little as he visualized it. "I'm enjoying life in town, though," he went on to say. "More than I ever thought I could. I have a life that exists outside of atoning for all the pain the Winter Soldier caused and I can see a life beyond all the crippling guilt and shame from it. I still have my dark days, but it's not like it used to be." He took his dink; it had a really big strawberry attached to the rim of it and was no less than seven different colors starting from the bottom to the top. Weird.
"Sorry -- I know I went on there but I know, I know how important it was to you I was getting the care I needed in Wakanda before all of this," he said. "When you couldn't be there because of missions and everything. Being in town has been like one long extended therapy session that's actually worked."